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The Sapphire RX 9070 XT Nitro+ ships in a colourful box, with a large Nitro logo on the front, alongside the AMD branding. On the back, Sapphire highlights several key features of the card and RDNA 4 architecture.
Inside, a couple of quick-start guides are included, along with an ARGB cable and triple 8-pin power adapter. A GPU support bracket also comes bundled, I would have preferred if it was colour matched to the rest of the card, but that's only a minor point.
As for the graphics card itself, Sapphire continues to create, in my opinion, beautiful shroud designs. It's clearly a continuation of the overall look from the RX 7000 series, but now there's some perforations in the shroud to add some visual interest, while a grille covers the front side. It just strikes me as a very refined look, and I personally love it.
Sapphire is of course using a triple-fan setup, with three of the company's AeroCurve Fan Blade designs being deployed, each measuring 100mm in diameter.
In terms of its size, the Nitro+ measures 330.8 x 128.5 x 65.68mm, so it's just over a triple-slot thickness. It weighs in at 1591g without the backplate cover, or 1898g with it.
Speaking of the backplate, at first glance it looks fine, but nothing special, with a large cut-out area towards the end of the card. Sapphire actually includes a removable backplate cover, which it calls ‘MagniPlate' and this comes separately in the box.
This simply attaches to the back of the card via six very strong magnets, and it instantly cleans up the overall look, with the perforations matching the shroud design.
On top of that, the removable cover acts as a way to hide the 12VHPWR cable, which connects to the rear of the PCB. Sapphire's thinking is that the cable can route from the card, straight behind the motherboard tray and out of sight, while the cover means you don't see the cable snaking over the back of the card. It's very clever really and creates a beautiful aesthetic.
That's only enhanced by the LED strip too, something that's been carried over from the previous generation. It's not too in your face, the LEDs are well diffused, and the lighting can be controlled either in Sapphire's TriXX software or via your motherboard if you attach the ARGB cable.
That ARGB header sits on the rear of the PCB, just next to the 12VHPWR connector.
As for display outputs, Sapphire has fitted two HDMI 2.1 and two DisplayPort 2.1 connectors.
The first thing to know about disassembling the card is that Sapphire has kept its very smart design where the fan shroud can be removed independently from the rest of the heatsink, so you don't need to worry about re-pasting or completely tearing the card down if you only need to replace one fan, for instance.
Sapphire has also fitted a steel frame underneath the heatsink to provide extra rigidity, part of the company's ‘Frame Defense' mechanism.
Once you make it to the PCB itself, we can see that Sapphire is using sixteen power phases overall, broken down with 10 phases for the GFX, three for the SOC, two for MVDD and one for VDDCI. These phases are controlled by a pair of Monolithic Power Systems MP2868A controllers, while Monolithic MP87993 MOSFETs are used throughout.
The heatsink utilises six heatpipes, with the GPU and VRAM contacting with a central baseplate. Smaller secondary plates are used to contact the VRM.
Lastly, the backplate is left bare, but contact is made to the back of the PCB via three thermal pads which sit behind the memory modules.
